DAYS 43 - 46
Albania
Wednesday 23 May
Weather sunny in Greece but increasily cloudy and wet as we head north.
Mileage 165 (at the start 2550)
ALBANIAN - The plan for the Balkans is to start at the Albanian border and head north along the coast. Probably Sarande, Flores, somewhere else (which ended up being Shkoder) , and then over the border into Montenegro.
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On day one we drive along such a narrow nondescript road for miles and miles that we start to doubt the infinite wisdom of Google Maps. Is this really the road to one of only two border crossings into Albania? Yes it is. All of a sudden an enormous border post appears across this A class goat track. Greece lets us go, Albania welcomes us. It is impossible to insure a car in Albania from outside Albania, but for E49 you can insure one at the border. All very friendly, very efficient, and all in good English, and all a good 30 miles from anywhere at all on both sides of the border.
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Into Albania - cheery text from Vodafone, no roaming charges in Albania! Phone has five bars and 4G. I don;t get that anywhere in Kent. This is getting ridiculous. I can't even make a phone call from my house and yet I have had 4G everywhere since I left Kent, I don't even use the hotel wi-fi as the 4G connection on my phone used as a hot-spot is faster. Go figure.
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This amazing phone service is probably useful to all the shepherds that appear as though by magic. Shepherds here there and everywhere. We saw more real shepherds in one hours driving than I have seen in a lifetime. All on their phones. Sheep and goats all over the shop - but what do they care? They can talk to mum from the hillsides. In Kent I can't even call 999 on mine.
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Scenery very different to Greece. In Greece all the hills are wooded, nay forested. In Albania they are all bare, just occasional trees. Great roads, tractors everywhere. So many part finished houses, concrete skeletons everywhere, why part build thousands of houses? So few people. 2.9 million in a country of 28,000 sq km. Wales 3.2 million population in two thirds of the land area. Where did they find the builders to half finish so many jobs???
We make for one of the resort towns called Sarande. Really quite nice in a tatty sort of way. Every single building has balconies everywhere, balconies on balconies. And every fourth building is a concrete shell, just the pillars and floors. You've done the hard work at that stage, why not just do the last 25% and finish it? The answer according to Google is that when communism collapsed in 1991 the Albanians felt that riches were theirs. A number of fraudulent pyramid schemes were introduced to fund an insane building boom, and being naive, they went for it big time! Add in no proper planning control, that you don't pay tax on an unfinished building and that there is no land registry so you build where you like and you have a blot on the landscape, or rather thousands and thousands of blots. But they are starting to sort it out, apparently they roll up one day and push your illegal building over, yup, just bulldoze it onto its side and leave. Nice solution, not the neatest, but effective.
Sara was up at 2.00am this morning to get to Gatwick to rejoin the team, so after a brisk walk round town and a very good dinner it was time for bed. The plan for tomorrow is to get more adventurous. The people are lovely, the roads are good, so it is head for the hills! We are taking the BMW off road again. Instead of a cut and run north we are going to go the pretty way
DAY 44
Albanian Hills
Thursday 24 May
Weather sunny, just as it should be.
Mileage today 150.
Having realised that at least some of the things we heard about Albania were wide of the mark, the country is as safe as a house, good roads, lovely people, no issues at all, we decided to make some mountainous detours. First was to go to the famous Blue Eye, a massive spring where millions of gallons of water gush out of the mountainside in a blue, blue torrent. There we found another version of the bridge that Monet loved, he must have missed this one.
It was while driving along the amazing roads that Sara came over all poetic. The hills in Greece are all forested, in Albania they are "dramatic shaven hills", no trees at all. Lots of wildlife too, most of it in the middle of the road, tortoises, ducks, sheep, goats, dogs, The views are simply stunning and there are once again, NO cars. Those are on the road drive really well.
Coming back to all the horror stories you hear about Albanian, well that must have been from a previous time (and to be fair it was only as recently as 1997 that 2000 people were killed in their civil war over the aforementioned Ponzi schemes that ruined the country). It has to be said that the place is great. The people are really friendly, speak quite a bit of English, could not be more helpful. The roads are nothing like the rumours one hears, the main roads are superb, the A and B roads are really good, everyone drives sensibly, no tailgating. The food is very nice and so cheap - a meal for two with wine is about £8 a head. Hotels are clean, modern, and £50 a night for a four star with breakfast. The towns are a bit Magaluf 1960's but that is only to be expected. The villages are a bit communist chic 1950's style, rather too many concrete boxes and blocks of flats, but one again, only to be expected. Much as we love Greece, if you want a holiday home with character and a guaranteed profit in the future, Albania is the place (and you can put the toilet paper in the loo, whereas in Greece you can't. Small point but an important one - in Greece you put it all in a bin next to the loo, which is a bit weird). Anyway, moving on from my fascination with Greek/Albanian plumbing comparisons.
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The next stop was the small town of Gjirokaster which boasts a lovely castle. I won't bore you with more shots of truly amazing valleys, flood plains and mountains. I will pop in one of how the old Albanian villages were architecturally lovely, but spoiled by the later addition of masses of concrete blocks of flats. I have also added one of Sara in a traditional Albanian hat for balance. Two examples of the old and the new together. Old houses, new flats, Old Sara, new hat.
Lovely classic old houses fill the bottom left corner,
crappy concrete blocks of flats fill the top right corner.
Back on the road again for another 100 miles north to the coastal town of Vlore, another must visit place. The problem of being only 2.9 million population is that there are actually not that many towns. The other odd thing is where on earth does the money come from??
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Top quality roads being built everywhere (and remember they are not it the EU), and in Vlore they must have spent millions of the waterfront, it looks like Cannes! This will definatly be the place to come in the not too distant future.
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The Admin & Hotels branch of 'Sara's Tours' had outdone themselves again. A stunning hotel carved into the cliff face, top quality room, E50. Really good restaurant, lovely sunset.
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Then up in the morning for a long 4.5 hour driving day north to Shkoder, a lakeside and mountain location for a change.
Excuse the weird cars, this happens when you use complicated panoramic 'stitch' shots on the amazing iphone. Can't be helped. I'm not actually a photographer.
Hotel about 6 stories high, one room deep. We had dinner and enjoyed the sunsetsunset from the balcony (circled).
O
DAY 45
Drive north to the mountains
Friday 25 May
Weather sunny.
Mileage today 250.
Today was a driving day. We have only had a couple of days where we actually drive any real distance. Today is a long one to get up to northern Albanian and a resort town called Shkoder. The drive is mainly motorway and A roads, all good.
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There are a lot of Police road blocks in Albania and so people tend to drive quite safely, average speed on the motorway is only 60 mph. They are also considerate drivers, contrary to all the rumours. We take a detour to a beach resort that was recommended, bad move. That really was Margate some years ago. To be fair to the resort, a place called Shengjin, there was a five star hotel where we enjoyed a lunch for £10 for two. We arrived at Shkoder in the late afternoon and performed our new hotel trick. We find a nice place on Bookings.com but we don't book it, we set the GPS to the door, scope it out, walk in and do a deal (or rather the Admin & Hotel team do a deal, normally not one that the hotel owner likes, and normally for a bigger room than I think we need, but hey-ho)..
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The saying of this trip is "Imagine what this would be like in the season!!!" It would be hell. Apparently, just like Greece, Albanian resorts fill to bursting in July/August. In May, not so much. We have still only seen three GB plated cars on the whole of our trip. The whole trip, not just in Albanian - where we drove miles behind a brand new GB plate Audi A7. Bet he was not British, bet he'd just nicked it!
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The picture to the bottom left is the street with our hotel. Lots of restaurants and live music. In fact too much live music, there were about three bands performing in 100 yards, so it was a cacophony (and how often do you get to say 'cacophony' in the true sense of the word?). The picture below is of the town center. Nice place, really friendly, Sara spend two hours and a whole £8 getting a full leg wax surrounded by women who did not speak a word of English in a back street beauty salon. She then walked back alone in the dark. Well, I could hardly wait with her, I had a meeting with some beers and people watching to attend to, and wait two hours? I'm sorry?.
DAY 46
Sightseeing to Thith
Saturday 26 May
Weather sunny.
Mileage today would have been around 200.
We set of at dawn in high spirits. One mile out of town I am slightly concerned at a click, click, click' sound from the front of the car. However, seconds later I am way more concerned at the 'bong. bong. bong' sound from the BMW alarm system. 'Run-flat Tyre Alert'. BONG, BONG, BONG!!! We pull over and bugger me sideways, the poxy thing is flat. Shagging great nail in it.
'Housten we have a problem', R10FFN has run-flat tyres, no spare. Run-flat tyres for 6 series BMW's are as rare as rocking horse shit in these parts and they can't be repaired. We don't panic. It is 60k to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, we can just make that on a run-flat and there must be a BMW main dealer there. A delay of maybe 2-3 days to get a tyre? OK, it's a pain but we can live with it.
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Sara pipes up.... "Brian, there is a tyre repair shop dead opposite". Me "Yeah, that's likely"... Sara "Trust me dickhead, just look up from your phone (I was Googling BMW dealers in Albanian, no chance). I look up and, like an apparition looming out of the heat haze is a bloody tyre repair shop twenty yards away on the other side of the road........... I mean, what???
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Drive over, it's open. Bloke only bloody speaks English..... "Repair a run-flat, of course I can sir. I'll do it right now". Me "I thought they were unrepairable?" Bloke "Bollocks, it will be 100%" And he does. Literally 15 minutes later he has the repaired unit on the balance wheel.
Sounds like a happy ending?, sadly no! Worried look. Calls me over, shows me a buckled wheel. At this point the Admin Team start on about a massive pot hole I drove into in 'Margate' yesterday. I swear blind the wheel was probably like that when I bought the car (but I suspect the truth is the pothole). Amazing Albanian bloke says "tyre fine, wheel, not so much" (yup, he says that too).
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Now finding a BMW tyre is bad, finding a flipping BMW wheel hereabouts really is going to be a trial. Amazingly unbelievable Albanian bloke "I happen to have a new set of 2017 design BMW wheels for this exact car in stock sir, a snip at £750 fitted, and I can do it right now". I'm sorry?????????
Within 10 minutes of finding out we have a flat, we have it repaired, literally. Within 10 minutes of finding out we have a buckled rim, we have three blokes round the car fitting four new wheels, And before any cynics start up - I had a feeling that I had buckled the rim in the pothole 40 miles back, and we picked up the nail as we drove into town, and you can't buy just one new wheel, it's a set or nothing.
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I could not have got that done in Maidstone!! From realising we had a puncture we drove 50 yards to get it fixed. Within an hour we had a complete set of new wheels fitted and a run-flat repaired. Yes, it did cost £750, but come on?? What were the chances??????????. I didn't even have to call the AA.
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Small down side - This guy was a real car nut. He owned his own Audi A8 for goodness sake. His spare was a newMerc 4WD. So he did me a 'favour' - he pimped my ride...... without asking. He just knew I would like it. I mentioned that the tyres seemed to sit wider. Amazing Albanian Bloke "Yes, I fitted spacers for free - looks great doesn't it?". I simply did not have the heart................ See what you think. Having Google it I am pretty certain that it is an MOT fail (Steve?).
A 100 billion to one chance. Dead opposite where
we pulled up with a flat.
OLD
CLASSIC 2013
M SPORT
(Mr normal)
NEW
2017/18
M SPORT
WHEELS
(pimped)
For the record Mrs H is convinced that I was tucked up. She thinks the wheels are hooky. Not the full BMW ticket. I have tried and tried to explain that there is no money in fake wheels. But, a little shred of doubt does linger. No matter - my defense is we definitely had a flat, and the wheel was definitely buckled, so we were screwed. My man saved us, even if it is at the cost of me looking even more like I having a mid-life crisis!!!
So no run up into the mountains for R10FFN, just a bit of preening, showing off the new boots. Instead it's a run around Lake Shkoda for lunch. We find a nice restaurant, it's quite, and for the first time, not very welcoming. Sara decides on just a beer and then move on. Halfway through said beer (very welcome after all the mornings shenanigans) we see why. 200 teenagers descend on the place. We gallantly give up our seats and move on. I need to add at this juncture that Sara has some strange obsession with seeing some traditional dancing. We move 500 yards up the lake to a lovely restaurant. I have my binoculars out, as you do. Sara uses them to spy on the old restaurant - and blow me down - they are all Albanian dancing their little hearts out. We ask the waiter "Fauture joh luteem, Falemeenderit. Miru Paf Shim!". He replies "Pardon me?". No, actually the Albanians LOVE it when you have a try at their language, they are really appreciative. Plus they seem to understand even the most mangled attempt. Our Albanian is actually pretty good. We are at that stage when we say something they actually reply and start a conversation in Albanian, until we do the "????" thing with our hands and revert to "Sorry, sorry - We're English!!"
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No matter, it's Croatian (or Serbian) for Dummies from tomorrow - We're off to Montenegro in the morning. New wheels and tyres permitting the plan is to swing by the capital Podgorica and then down to our hotel near Tivat (too crowded due to half term) in lovely Perast for a couple of days before moving on to Dubrovnik and then a weeks holiday in Hvar. That's the plan anyway ..................